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Daily Archives: June 22, 2016

Many will feel detached from this referendum, disinterested even. Up until last week I had sympathy for that approach. I am approaching peak political fatigue myself, and I love nothing more than a bit of red vs blue. Yet tomorrow we vote, perhaps in the biggest single referendum any of us will ever have the opportunity to engage in.

Last week a young woman, an MP elected by her community, was brutally murdered in a quiet West Yorkshire street. She wasn’t killed because of atrocities she was complicit in, or personal mendacity leading to injustice elsewhere. She wasn’t even killed simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was killed because of her political views, a set of views that include aiding refugees and a commitment to minimising conflict and division. She was killed because underneath our social artifice their still lies a small but active fascist sentiment that permeates throughout the land.

It is impossible not to draw comparisons as a result with the events of the 30s and 40s when fascism and the unending desire for territory reached its zenith in Europe. Those events in some part, but a very decisive part, led to the creation of what has now become the European Union. Anyone who says otherwise does a disservice to the concerted efforts of millions.

Not since the 10 day war in 1956, when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, have European countries gone to war with one another (there have been internal conflicts of course such as that of Yugoslavia).

This may all be a startling coincidence, and peace could simply be the result of US domination of capital and arms. Neither is completely true, and equally neither is entirely false.

I only ask that you watch this video and absorb just how many died in those 6 fateful years between 1939-45 and ask yourself – is removing one of our only proven bulwarks against this a good idea?

Rough estimates suggest 61 million people died during those 6 years. Many of them were non-combatants, the vast majority were Europeans. 388,000 were citizens of the UK and its dependencies. The average age was 23 years old of those who died in combat. Many of horrific injuries. The deaths that occurred later due to not immediately lethal injuries is perhaps as many again.

All you have to do is go and vote…if you think this could not happen again you are repeating the very same delusions many in Europe suffered at the end of the Great War.

I hope you vote Remain. Many whose children, and their children after them, who were never born would certainly envy your opportunity to make that choice.

p.s Nigel Farage is a catastrophic fuck nugget and we should all celebrate any opportunity to destroy the man’s pin striped Home Counties wet dream.